What is Add to Cart Rate A Detailed Guide for Online Retailers
Having an online store is an exciting venture, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. One of the key challenges is convincing website visitors to add products to their carts and complete purchases. This is where tracking your add to cart rate comes in handy.
In this comprehensive guide, we will dive into what the add to cart rate is, how to calculate it, what’s considered a good benchmark, tips for improvement, and tools to track this metric.
Let’s get started!
What is Add to Cart Rate?The add to cart rate also sometimes referred to as the cart addition rate, is one of the key ecommerce metrics to understand the shopping behavior and intent of your website visitors.
It indicates the percentage of website sessions that resulted in at least one item being added to the shopping cart
For example, if you had 100 visits to your online store in a day, and 10 of those visits led to products being added to carts, your add to cart rate would be 10%.
The add to cart rate gives you insight into how effectively you are convincing visitors to take the first step towards becoming paying customers. It serves as a macro-level indicator of the performance of your product listings, descriptions, pricing, website usability and more.
A high add to cart rate demonstrates your ability to entice visitors and get them interested enough in your offerings to add them to their carts. However, it does not guarantee they will complete the purchase.
Your checkout and conversion rates will indicate what percentage of those add to carts became actual sales. But a higher add to cart rate is a positive starting point.
How to Calculate Add to Cart Rate
Calculating your add to cart rate is quite straightforward:
Add to Cart Rate = (Sessions with items added to cart / Total sessions) x 100
To break this down into steps:
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Identify the total number of visits or sessions to your online store over a specific period of time (day, week or month). This can be found in your web analytics software.
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Next, identify how many of those sessions resulted in at least one product being added to the cart. Again, your analytics software should provide this.
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Divide the number of sessions with cart additions by the total sessions.
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Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage.
Let’s look at an example:
Over the last month, your online store had 5,000 total visits. Of these, 850 visits included at least one item being added to the cart.
Your add to cart rate would be:
(850 / 5000) x 100 = 17%
What is a Good Add to Cart Rate?
Like most ecommerce metrics, there is no single benchmark for a “good” add to cart rate. Averages can range quite a bit based on factors like:
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Product price – Lower priced items may have higher add to cart rates. A $10 book is more likely to be tossed in the cart than a $1000 TV.
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Product category – Consumables and household items may have higher add to cart rates than rare, infrequent purchases.
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Website traffic sources – Organic and direct visitors may be more purchase-ready than referrals.
According to industry data, a typical add to cart rate for US-based ecommerce sites falls around 9-18%. Items priced under $50 tend to fall at the higher end of that range.
A rate between 10-15% is reasonably healthy for many online retailers. But again, your goals and benchmarks will depend largely on your product offerings, price points, website design and traffic sources.
Tracking your own add to cart rate over time and experimenting with changes provides the best gauge of what’s working for your business.
How to Improve Your Add to Cart Rate
If your add to cart rate is lower than you’d like, here are some proven ways to give it a boost:
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Streamline product page design – Ensure add to cart buttons, pricing, descriptions and images are given prominence on each product page. Remove unnecessary clutter surrounding these key elements.
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Refresh product descriptions – Write compelling descriptions that highlight each product’s value, features, benefits and uses. Include details like size, materials and care instructions.
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Show limited quantity -Displaying only a certain number of each item left in stock can create urgency to add the product to their cart before it sells out.
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Offer discounts – Consider promotions like first-time customer discounts or free shipping that incentivize cart additions and purchases.
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Recommend related products – Suggest complementary or accessory items on each product page to encourage add-ons.
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Highlight buyer reviews and ratings – Display excellent reviews, ratings and testimonials prominently to build trust and nudge customers.
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Set up product bundle offers – Recommend products that complement each other and offer them as discounted bundles.
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Ensure mobile optimization – Review usability and design on mobile devices, which account for a large chunk of ecommerce traffic nowadays.
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Retarget cart abandoners – Remarket specifically to visitors who previously added items but did not complete the checkout process.
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Insert exit intent popups – As visitors are about to leave your site, popups can invite them back to the cart with discounts or related product recommendations.
Careful testing and iteration on product pages and throughout the website is key to identifying the tactics that work for converting your visitors into buyers.
Tools to Track Add to Cart Rate
Here are some popular tools that allow you to easily monitor your store’s add to cart rate:
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Google Analytics – Provides detailed insights into online store visits and shopping behavior, including cart additions.
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Databox – Offers an ecommerce dashboard template with preset metrics like add to cart rate.
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Ometria – Specialized tool for ecommerce marketers to track metrics from product views to purchases.
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Mixpanel – Analytics platform enabling you to analyze funnel performance from product views to checkouts.
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Heap – Tracks user behavior including product interactions to identify usability issues.
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Indicative – Web analytics with features to record and replay visitor sessions, including cart activity.
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Hotjar – Includes heatmaps, recordings and other analytics to understand on-site interactions.
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Crazy Egg – Provides heatmaps and click tracking to see how visitors interact with product pages and cart.
Key Takeaways
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Add to cart rate shows the percentage of website sessions that included visitors adding at least one item to their carts.
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It is calculated by dividing sessions with cart additions by total sessions.
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10-15% is a reasonably healthy add to cart rate for many ecommerce businesses.
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Improving product pages, descriptions, pricing, discounts and overall site usability can boost add to cart rates.
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Analytics tools like Google Analytics, Databox and Mixpanel allow you to closely monitor this metric.
Tracking your add to cart rate and setting goals for improvement provides valuable insights into how well your online store is performing. Paired with checkout and conversion rate metrics, it paints a complete picture of how many site visitors you are converting into paying customers.
Use the tips above to start boosting your add to cart rate today! Let us know in the comments if you have any other successful tactics to suggest.
What Is a Good Add-to-Cart Rate?
A good average Add-to-Cart Rate typically ranges between 8% to 10%. This indicates that the website effectively engages visitors, and products are well-aligned with purchase-driven consumers.
To sustain a high Add-to-Cart rate, maintain a user-friendly design, fast loading times, and mobile responsiveness.
Highlight Changes and Trends
Clearly point out any significant changes or trends in Add-to-Cart rate, such as seasonal variations or impacts from marketing campaigns.
Use charts and graphs to visually represent the Add-to-Cart rate trends, which makes data easier to understand and actionable.
New Shopify store: Improving add to cart rate instantly
What is add-to-cart rate?
The add-to-cart rate is simply a ratio of the number of sessions where an item was added to the cart through the cart button (not taking into account abandoned carts) versus how many visitors your website saw overall. What is a good add-to-cart rate? Overall, add-to-cart rates are around 9-18% when considering the whole world.
How do I calculate add-to-cart rate?
Regularly calculating add-to-cart rate provides you with benchmarks to determine the success of website updates or product launches. The basic formula for add-to-cart rate is: Add-to-cart rate = sessions where a user adds an item to card / total sessions Follow these steps to calculate add-to-cart rate on a website:
How to improve add-to-cart rate?
16. Write microcopy below the add-to-cart button “My one tip to improve add-to-cart rate is to strategically place some micro-copy right below the button,” says Nikola Roza of Nikola Roza- SEO for the Poor and Determined. “This almost universally works because people who’re on the fence of buying actually want to buy.
Why should you measure your add-to-cart conversion rate?
In conclusion, measuring your add to cart rate can give you insights into the number of interested shoppers on your site, your top-performing products, and help you identify any points of friction in the buying process. What is add-to-cart conversion rate and how do you improve yours?
